No. 19
China Mail
HOME SUPPLEMENT
Introducing...
An Argument
THE
assumption that children
are essential to happ". marriage, "that few marriages are happy without them is an old. worn-out theory. It is one of these trite statementa 20 often repeated that in is expecte ed to be accepted without ques- tion Yet it is a conviction with which a great many ideally happy married couples do not, in their hearts, agree.
The intense joy and pride with which many a first child is welcomed into a home is so very often more than counterbalanced by the worry, anxiety and, later on, sorrow and heartache so many of them cause.
Much, of course, depends upon the temperament of the men and women concerned. There are women obsessed by mother-love and baby worship that not to have a family would amount almost to a tragedy. There are men who are cut out for family men and who are at their best with youngsters round them.
05
are
But these, in spite of the soulful writings of journalists, are in the minority. Most marriages. brought about because a man and a woman love each other; and desire to spend their lives together.
If children come along they are welcomed and loved and cared for. If they do now they are not missed and their absence is certainly not alowed to come between husband and wife or to cause their love for each other to wane. On the con- trary, the couple who have never had children to bless them have never had them to trouble or sadden them either.
Let us be honest with ourselves. Look round and see the ever-increas- ing number of divorces and count the proportion of these discontented couples who are childless. Not even the staunchest advocate of full cradles can blink her eyes to the fact that most of these women, either deserting wives or deserted ones, have had a child or chüdren.
On the other hand the happiest couples are often those without children. True, they usually assert that this has been a Ife-long sorrow and disappointment to them, and some of them do sincerely think they have missed the highest bliss. But in no case has it been the cause of marriage failure. They have - never had anything to part them
There have been no differences or arguments about the bringing up and training of children. They have always been able to take their plea- surés together, a condition impos- sible for many years in a home where the babies arrive quickly, and so they have had no temptation to grow apart.
That the love of little children is a happy thing and that they are meant to cheer and brighten our homes we all know. But it is the contention that childless marriages are less happy that is of interest to the many childless wires who know themselves to be adored and for- tunate in their married lives. Re cords do not bear out the inference that children are essential to mar- ried happiness, or that they make for increased loyalty or faithfulness. Whatever 2 childless married couple may lose, they do not lose their love for each other. They are usually drawn far nearer "on this very accouzi.
HONG KONG, SATURDAY, JULY 20, 1935
Na 19
WHAT IS WOMAN'S FUTURE?
F you could photograph. or fiteze, an arean roller just
I
as it began to break on the shore with its tons of water piling in higher and higher, its lear greea crest curled over and its first line of foam start- ing to slip back down the sand. you would have a fair symbol of the present stage of the feminist
movement.
It started out in mid-ocean with the American and the English in iha last century. It gathered strength as the and bulk and momentum Scandinavians under Ellen Key, the Germans, the Duzch, and the women of other nations joined The war, which took women out of thei homes in every fighting country and set them to working together o common necessities, gave it almost the force of a tidal wave and in
In Russia
the first year of the succeeding peace it rose to regal heights, when many free-banded countries handed out the crowning right of suffrage to women who formerly had not had " any rights at all.
And then, when the tide was still piling in, with Russia's equalitarian attitude toward women to give it added weight, the first break came. Mussolini, starting his dictating career by giving Emited suffrage to certain groups of women, soon made it clear that this was just a momen- tary gestore, and that what he really believed was that woman's
place was in the home - raising future soldiers and citizens for Fascist Italy. Then Hitler cancel. led the victories which women had
In America They Occupy Important Jobs, but They Have. "Not
Yet Wow Perity With Men.
won under the Weimar Constitu- tion, assigned them a definitely is- ferior status in h's masculine world, and: seat them back to "Kinder Kirche. Koeche." Thy first.foan. was slipping, back down the wat sand.
to play. French women, almost the only ones who have not been grant- ed increased rights since the war, seem to be losing what little in- terest they had in the possibility of gaining the franchise..
Carrie Chapman Catt, speaking, on her setrenky-fifth birthday of the woman's cause to which she had devoted her. life. warned them against the wave of conservatism which was sweeping over the world and which would probably carry-well as political them backward for a time.
Feminine expressions of dis illusionment with the rights and daties of citizenship in the United States have more than once taken the form of authorised intervie* and printed outburst, and there is even a frequently encountered sen- timent that the suffrage struggle was not worth the candle. Certam feminine organisations with high purposes admit a definite slacken- ing of interest in their "causes," and one authoritative observer re- ports that the only kind of club. that attracted the your? women of 1933 was one which had its own clubhouse and ministered to her comforts.
Reports from Sweden indicate that theories of emancipation have far outrun actual practice, that Swedish women have been slow to exercise some of the rights they possess, and that women have not played the important role in politics that they are theoretically entitled
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Only Spain, South America, wita its generous gesture at Montevideo, and Russia, report a definite for- ward movement within the last few hard years. In the case of Spain, ⚫ that forward movement has been educational, professional, social, as
But the latest manifestations in the recent · elec- tions, where nums and countesses and other secluded ladies played a large part in voting against the Ivery forces which had given them. for the first time the right to vote, would seem to indicate à difference of opinion about progress which has has yet to be settled.
In Soviet Russia women can vote,.. hold office, enter a profession, go into the army; in fact the propa- ganda, toward making women econo- mically independent has been so steady that few women will now admit that they have nothing to do but stay at home and look after the family.
She must contribute part of her salary to support her husband should he be sick or unemployed, she must contribute to the support of the children if she and their Eather are separated, no matter who has charge of them. She has the right to hold her own earnings, to make contracts and to divorce.
ask
Whether the future course of the women of the world will be toward the German ideal or toward the Russian, only the future can tell. War, sport and sex are each potent factors which must be taken into- consideration in any attempt to peer behind the veil They are factors capable of upsetting women and governments alike.
According to one school of thought, it was the force of a chang- ing economic order which took wo- men out of their houses in the first place, set them to following, their former occupations into mills and factories and offices and inspired them with the idea that they ought to possess the rights of men as long as they were doing the work of men. Rowever ancient war and sex may be, sport, at least in its present public manifestations, owes much to the same force of economic change.
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